Making Sense of the Chatter
It’s been quite a couple of weeks in the eDiscovery world. FTI bought Attenex for $88 million. EED buys Daticon (anyone else notice that the press release for that didn’t have one mention of Xiotech, the company that sold Daticon? I called it back in my analyst days - a mid-tier storage provider should not own an eDiscovery service bureau). Steve D’Alencon leaves Kazeon to take over as CMO of CaseCentral. And, my phone rang several times with contacts from the venture capital world checking in for opinions on companies they are considering investments in. Why all the activity? I get the sense that the eDiscovery market is again at a precipice. Hype began around the time of the amendments to the FRCP - and market size projections have been high - I should know, I did one of them 
Are the market projections wrong? No, and in fact, I would say the market projections have been conservative. What’s been delaying the near-term growth is, first and foremost, the immaturity of the enterprise market when it comes to eDiscovery. For those of us in the market, the ignorance is hard to fathom. Yet, at meeting after meeting, I still hear legal and IT on opposite sides of the fence (and often ignoring the business people that know how best to manage information).
But, the FRCPs are powerful - and they are driving change. We’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for the market to pop. And now, the first signs of a boil emerge. We now sit waiting for the next shoe to drop, and everyone’s got an opinion on when and which shoe it will be. I’m interested in hearing yours…
In the meantime, while all the exciting activity takes place in vendor land - you organizations need pragmatic solutions that address today’s pain and can evolve to be a long-term solution. Let me know how I can help you plan that out.
